Geoffrey L. Shepard was an Associate Director on the Domestic Council Staff, starting in September 1970. Mr. Shepard’s assignments primarily dealt with the Justice Department and law enforcement which he outlined in his interview. He also described with whom he worked in the White House and throughout the Executive Branch.

Transcript

Exit interview with Geoffrey C. Shepard
conducted by Terry Good
in Room 234 of the Old Executive Office Building
on September 11, 1974

TG:

I might add that I will probably appear rather ignorant in some cases, but that's simply the way I almost have to be in order to elicit...

GS:

Sure.

TG:

...the kind of information that you need. So, I may know more than I let on, not in all cases, but, nevertheless.... Well, I understand that you actually became affiliated with the administration as a White House Fellow.

GS:

Yes.

TG:

And for the first year you were over at [the] Treasury [Department].

GS:

Yes.

TG:

Is there anything about that first year over at Treasury that related directly to the White House that you might want to touch on?

GS:

There are only two items. One is: while at Treasury I rewrote what later became one of the titles in the Safe Streets Act of 1970 which provided for the protection of the Presidential homes. There is a section in that law that allows the Secretary of the Treasury to designate what homes and provide Secret Service protection. As originally submitted by the Secret Service it was unconstitutional and one of the things I did while I was over there, was redraft that section. I got to know [Egil M.] "Bud" Krogh through doing that, and I eventually came to work for him over here when that was complete. With the exception of that and the meetings as a Fellow with other members of the Nixon administration--there's nothing in particular about my year.

TG:

Well then, picking up, I think you came over here in September of 1970, is that correct?

GS:

That's correct.

TG:

And I gather that you, were you assigned then to Bud Krogh at that point?

GS:

Yes, I was hired by [John D.] Ehrlichman. I had met Ehrlichman at the opening of the year as White House Fellow. He was down at Airlie House speaking to the group, and he suggested he'd like to see the group at the end of their year and find out what they thought and what they'd learned. I sat next to Ehrlichman at Airlie House because he was from Seattle, and I was from (at the point just from) Seattle, and I had worked in a law firm there. Ehrlichman remembered that at the end of the next year when he met with us the second time and asked if I were going back to Seattle. I said that I was if I couldn't get a job on the White House staff. fie thought that was just a great idea and asked me to come over and interview with him. Eventually that led to my being hired on the Domestic Council and assigned to Krogh.

TG:

Was there any specific reason that you were assigned to Bud? Was it because of your past experience at Treasury or particular interests?

GS:

When Ehrlichman asked me who I wanted to work with or what areas I wanted to work in, the only guy I knew was Krogh. I liked him, he worked mostly in the legal areas. I had no idea what his full scope of responsibilities was when I indicated I wanted to work for him, but, as it developed, he had an opening. I told him I was talking with John and he'd already said he wanted me to work for him too, so it worked, it was a beautiful mesh.

TG:

At that point, when you came over here, who were the other people on, under Krogh's direction, that you might have been dealing with?

GS:

Only one other person; that was Jeff [Jeffrey E.] Donfeld. I believe Krogh may have had a previous assistant by the name of Chris [Christopher] DeMuth and I may have taken Chris's place.

TG:

In terms of just filling the slot or in terms of taking over the assignment?

GS:

No, no, no, not in terms of taking over the assignments at all. Everybody remembered Chris, and I never met him. Chris wasn't there; he'd left to go to law school right at September. So, if there was anyone whose mess privileges and slot I picked up, it was DeMuth's, but I didn't pick [up] any of his work product, because what I got I got directly from Krogh. There weren't any files, or anything that I inherited.

TG:

Well, what were the assignments then that you received when you came over here?

GS:

Originally the assignments all dealt with the Department of Justice, namely LEAA, the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, which was the organization within the Department of Justice that's the grant-making arm. That's the only area in the Department of Justice that gives away money. I also worked with the Criminal Division, and I worked with the Deputy Attorney General's office. He had an organization, which was then run by Don [Donald E.] Santarelli, called the Office of Criminal Justice. The other area was justice legislation. At that time Wally [Wallace H.] Johnson was the legislative man in the Department and I worked very close with Wally. Now this, of course, evolved over the two and a half years that I worked for Krogh, and I got into other areas, but my first work was all justice related.

TG:

Is there any way you might just give me some feel for the type of work you were doing with, let's say, LEAA? Was it just a liaison operation on a basis of whenever it was necessary, or whether continuing programs that you were overseeing, or...?

GS:

LEAA had a leadership vacuum of fifteen months with no one in charge, and they needed policy guidance on what areas the President was most interested in developing. They could direct research in the criminal justice area into any direction that was important, but no one was actually pulling them in one direction or another. We would talk over what areas we thought ought to be explored. It was a result of external stimuli, either articles or books or talks with law professors or things that appeared in the President's News Summary that he'd indicate he wanted followed through on, that sort of thing. The same types of programs were run, although not through grant money, by the Office of Criminal Justice. It was, "How do we keep the federal government out front in the war against crime?" At that point none of the big criminal justice bills had passed, but, shortly after I got here, the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970 was signed into law in a ceremony at the Great Hall of the Department of Justice. I set that up. The Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Bill of 1970 was signed at what was then the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs [BNDD] headquarters. I set that up: ceremony, what the President would say, the tone set. The Safe Streets Act of 1970, and although it was, no, it became law later also, the District of Columbia Court Reorganization and Criminal Justice Act was also signed that year, involving DC crime. Reducing crime in the District of Columbia was a prime project. I worked with Police Chief Jerry Wilson closely on that, and Santarelli, finding out what the Chief wanted to do, making sure it was properly funded, making sure that we were giving him sufficient support in any number of areas, street lighting or narcotics or getting more police. Wilson was calling the shots, and they were Wilson's ideas, but we were making sure the Federal Government was enabling him to keep reducing crime here.

TG:

In these activities were you dealing just with Bud Krogh within the Domestic Council in the White House complex, or were you involved with other people within the White House in a substantive way?

GS:

In the beginning, of course, I only dealt with Krogh. Eventually I began to deal with some other people. There would be times when our programs or policies were running parallel or needed to touch base with the Counsel's office. In that regard I worked with Fred Fielding, who was Deputy Counsel. I worked with people in the Press Office, Neal Ball in particular, and I worked on a number of programs with Bill [William F.] Rhatican, who was in the employ of Chuck [Charles W.] Colson. We put on a Drug Abuse Conference and the working out of the people who would come, that sort of thing was done by Rhatican. We worked with the speech writers, but it wasn't on a substantive area. Other that that, there was no substance or policy input, with the exception of the Office of Management and Budget [OMB], where you got to have a budget taken care of. That was run by, at that point, by Mark Alger, who was head of the General Government Division of OMB. That's now classified under Wally [Walter D.] Scott's area, but then that reorganization hadn't occurred. So, I worked very closely with Alger and Alger's people; he had a staff of about seventeen guys.

TG:

As far as justice legislation, were you in contact with Wally Johnson's office or Wally Johnson himself?

GS:

Oh, yes. I thought you meant on the White House staff. I talked with Wally two or three times a day. You know, assume I've been here for a year, so that I know what I'm doing. There are innumerable bills that have to do with [the] criminal justice system or have to do with narcotics, because I also was in charge of drug enforcement and there was a terrific development area on drug enforcement. Eventually, I became in charge of international narcotics and treatment also, so that I had the full spectrum; although at the beginning, Donfeld was in charge of treatment, and Walt [Walter C.] Minnick, who eventually worked for Krogh, was in charge of drug.... [interruption]

TG:

O.K.

GS:

Minnick was in charge of drug initiatives in the international area. Minnick came over about a year after I did and put together the Cabinet Committee on International Narcotics. Then, when Walt left, I picked up [the] international area too. Because of these innumerable bills that were being introduced, the executive had to respond, take a position on the m. I would talk with Wally Johnson three or four times about various areas; these include terrorism, gun control, hijackings, drug abuse, death penalty, insanity pleas, federalizing the killing of a state or local police officer, innumerable issues under the crime and drugs area that would be introduced by any number of members of Congress. We had to take a position, and I would work that out with Johnson because the Department of Justice would be the official organization taking that position.

TG:

What would your role have been in this, Geoff? Were you simply relating to Wally Johnson's people or to Wally Johnson himself, the White House's reaction to some of these bills and legislation, or were you in fact revising then, modifying them, writing than, rewriting them?

GS:

It would depend on how it came to our attention. If it was a bill introduced by a member of Congress, obviously we didn't revise. Johnson would call and say, "Here's what we want to say." Or, this could come in through OMB's Legislative Reference Division. I worked with Lou Krulewitch there, some area. He'd say, "Here's what we want to say, here's our reaction," and I'd either say, "Yes" or "No" or "Modify your reaction to the bill." If it were Justice legislation, my role was to recognize the policy issues and either decide them or decide those [that] should be elevated to the President for a decision. Everything that was done, everything that I did, was to be sure it was consistent with what the President wanted. If you've asked similar questions recently, and you know where the President is, you can say whether it is consistent or not. If it's an area of first impression, or there have been substantially new developments, we would go back to the President, prepare a memorandum option paper for the President to actually decide. So, it would depend on how the legislation came in. Similarly, with the speech writers, we would do the substance sign-off on any Presidential utterance, whether it was in writing or to be given orally. We would also do the background papers for the President before a meeting; we would do the substance sign-off on any fact sheets having to do with bill signings or ceremonies of major Presidential initiatives. The packages for the State of the Union were done the same way. The first State of the Union I worked on was 1971, which was the "Six Great Goals." One of those was executive reorganization; I did a terrific amount of work with the Ash Council on government organization and namely Andy Rouse, who was executive director, in preparing all that material for the State of the Union. There was also the "New Federalism," the revenue-sharing concept, and LEAA at Justice was one of the six areas marked for special revenue-sharing, so that took a lot of drafting and work. My role in that was not the technical role but the policy decisions.

TG:

In these areas will the files reflect your responsibilities, your opinions, your views?

GS:

No. My files will, because everything that was typed at my direction or my dictation is in my chron[ological] files. But, from the whole time that I worked for Bud Krogh, everything was done for his signature, because his name was recognized by the President and mine was not. We do the same thing now, everything goes in under [Kenneth R.] Cole's name, and the associate directors don't sign anything. The only way to tell whether Krogh drafted it or I drafted it is to see if it is in my chron. Toward the end of the second year I did almost all of the drafting for any memorandum going to the President. That was because I knew what Bud wanted to say, and it was far easier for me to do that and him to go to the meetings, and he was, at the end of the second year, involved in ten times the number of projects that originally we started out on. We started in the criminal justice and drug area with two staff assistants. By the time we were through, Bud had about ten employees. I was his deputy, most of it came through me, but there was Charlie [Charles L.] Clapp, there was [Richard N.] Nordahl, there was Minnick, there [were] a couple people from OMB that were permanently assigned to Krogh: Ted [Theodore C.] Lutz and Mary Graham, Kay [Katharine] Graham's daughter-in-law. They did the District [of Columbia] problems. There was the Special Action Office for Drug Abuse Prevention which we put together and published, and that was headed by Dr. [Jerane H.] Jaffe, but Jaffe really worked for Krogh. There was Customs because it was involved in narcotics. There was BNDD, because they were the other enforcement branch. There was a terrific amount of liaison with Treasury because of the enforcement over there under Eugene Rossides. It wasn't always pleasant, but there was a series of give and takes there. Now that was all still done while Krogh was here. The major initiatives were embodied in a Presidential speech of July 17, 1971 on narcotics. That began the Special Action Office; it asked for a greatly expanded budget for enforcement and treatment. Then later, on September 9, although there is a substantial question about the date of the Executive Order, he set up this Cabinet Committee on International Narcotics. Then, in December of that same year, we set up what was called the Office of Drug Abuse Law Enforcement (ODALE), and you'd say you had roughly a three-ring circus going with some add-ons in narcotics alone. In the crime area we had strike forces, organized crime strike forces. We always had LEAA, and LEAA was always holding conferences and developing initiatives. We had some legislation under development which we were trying for, there was always the issue such as the exclusionary rule, bail reform, that sort of area. We played a lot with the crime rate. The FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] submits quarterly reports on how things are going out in hinterlands and we were tracking that very closely: what areas, especially DC crime, because by that point we're starting to cut crime substantially in the District, and we were slowing the crime wave in the rest of the country.

TG:

Now these topics that you have listed, you've given me an idea of who the people were on Bud's staff. Now I would assume this would have been late '71 - '72?

GS:

Heading towards the election.

TG:

The election. You mentioned something that I was unaware of, that you more or less were his deputy at this point in time. Would it then be fair to say that--I think that you mentioned this--that the work of the other people on the staff would probably have crossed your desk on its way to Bud?

GS:

With two exceptions it did. One was DC affairs. Bud took a great interest in DC affairs: it was immediate, it was real, and it was not policy, it was everyday problems. The District in those days was afraid to make a decision, and they'd move everything to the Mute House if they could. Ted Lutz and Mary Graham worked with Bud directly, that was one exception, which I didn't want to get into. I did DC crime but nothing else in the District. The other exception was the Special Investigations Unit which was developed in mid-1972 that he worked with Dave [David R.] ....

TG:

Young?

GS:

Dave Young. He had a private line down to Room 16 in the basement and did all his work directly with Young or the other people, [G. Gordon) Liddy. None of that came through me except the issue of gun control, which Liddy had an interest in. You'll find Liddy memos sometimes come through me on the way to Krogh; but other than that, it went directly to Bud. All the typing and everything was done down there. If it's not in, you know, I don't know where all those papers sort out, but none of than ended up in Krogh's files. They were all kept down in Room 16, and they're in Young's files, or there's a possibility they don't exist.

TG:

Would these other staff people have consulted with you on some of these problems, or was it simply a matter of you being the traffic cop for their assignments?

GS:

Oh, there would be some consulting. Minnick and I went through law school together, and we're best friends, so on international narcotics, since I did the other two and he did narcotics, we'd talk all the time. But, I'd see the papers before Krogh did. Even if they were delivered to his office, they would be brought across to mine just to read to give him a "Yes" or "No", you know, "This is OK; you don't have to spend time on it." But nobody had the impression they worked for me. It was more of a safety valve: "Bud, you really do have to see this guy because he's got an immediate problem and it needs your attention." The rest of the stuff was just, you know, "Sign here" and we just knew that this was routine. The general feeling was, if it came in, in the mail, it wasn't that important. You know, a lot of phone work, a lot of issue analysis done verbally. Mail that's delivered from the outside is a waste of time.

TG:

I jumped to that legislative question perhaps prematurely. Were there other things that you wanted to touch base on in terms of LEAA or your contact with Criminal Division?

GS:

No, it's all in the area of policy and policy development. There would be times when we would be given a speech or we would be putting together or considering an initiative and we wanted to consult lightly at Justice. For example, what became the privacy initiative that's now underway started back in conversations with Bill [William H.] Rehnquist, who was then head of the Office of Legal Counsel at Justice. Rehnquist's office gives all legal opinions on the constitutionality of projects. In that regard he was terrifically helpful in issue areas: you know, we can't do this for constitutional reasons, we may be able to do something else. A lot of give and take and mutual festering of programs. LEAA was just a continual sore because it was giving away money. There were investigations under way; they said that the money was being wasted, it was being abused. It was buying jets for state governors instead of, you know.... The police were getting too much, the courts weren't getting any. It was more of a "How are things going, let's get together and talk about it" kind of problem-solving than anything you could put your finger on.

TG:

Were your contacts outside of the White House complex for the most part during this period with Justice and OMB, or did you get any, make any contacts with Capitol Hill people in the course of this legislation?

GS:

No, the only working was done with OMB, Treasury, and Justice, and Chief Wilson, with very few exceptions. Hill contacts, now there were a couple: Wally Johnson came from the Hill before he went to Justice. I talked to him on the Hill because he was Minority Counsel of the Criminal Laws sub-committee of the Senate Judiciary. The Majority Counsel was Bob [G. Robert] Blakey, Who worked for Senator [John L.] McClellan, and I used to talk to Blakey quite frequently because the Senate was the predominant one in criminal legislation. The House was not particularly active in the area, and "Manny" [Einanuel] Celler took guidance from McClellan. I did some work with Mathias, Senator [Charles McC.] Mathias, because he was so eager about DC crime. He was worried about the suburbs when we were lowering the crime rate, and he wanted [a] crime conference, and we put that together for him. And some work with [Roman L.] Hruska's people simply because he was the ranking minority member on the Criminal Laws sub-committee of the Senate Judiciary Committee. But we didn't do a whole lot of Hill work; we relied on Justice to do that. Wally has come from the Hill; he was at ease up there; it was far better to have that Department deal directly.

TG:

How about contacts with private interest groups or...

GS:

None.

TG:

...state and local officials?

GS:

None. All that was done through the Department of Justice. Don Santarelli did an awful lot of contact with the interest organizations: with the DA's [District Attorneys], the Attorneys General, the National Council on Crime, the [unintelligible] of the State judges. That was either done through Santarelli's office of Criminal Justice or LEAA. We had a meeting with Chiefs of Police here when there were a lot of police killings, but it was put together by the Department of Justice. We did crime events here, but they were very seldom with interest groups. We brought in drug agents who made seizures; we brought in the Policeman of the Year; we took the President to New York in March of 1972 on a drug adventure, March 20th. March 21st we signed the [unintelligible] Bill down here; we went down to Laredo for an event in a Customs station in Texas; but those were all involving government Employees. You see, the federal enforcement agencies don't really have outside interest groups, so we did relativley little from our perspective with interest groups. We had Justice shield them.

TG:

I take it then that you probably didn't do much traveling.

GS:

No, I didn't do very much traveling at all. I did some for consulting purposes. I did some for learning purposes: you go out and you spend a day in a regional office and find out how crime's going, how the payments are going. I went to Turkey with Mark Alger in 1972. I'm not sure of the year, I've got to think about it for a second, but I got back two days after the break-in occurred at DNC [Democratic National Committee].

TG:

'72.

GS:

'72, had to be '72. We were going to put together the two enforcement agencies; what is now DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) is the result of a reorganization plan that Mark Alger and I and Justice and Treasury representatives worked on for about three months. It came to fruition right when Roy Ash came on, and Roy Ash actually put it together and followed it through, but the basic work was done before that. That's why I want, we want to, we want.... See, there was massive trouble between the two organizations abroad--Treasury and Justice--on narcotics, and so we stopped in at a couple of places: Paris, well we went through France because we hit Marseilles too. So, it was Germany, France, Italy, and Turkey on narcotics. I think I went out to the Seattle places every once in a while, and I went out to California to look at the projects I wanted to see that LEAA was doing, happened to be there. It wasn't the kind, it was something we were considering having the President visit, but it hadn't reached the point where you'd send an advance man to put the program together. It was, "Is this substantively a place where we want the President to go?" New York and California had the worst drug problems, and they had the initiatives out there, so I would go there. But pretty much there wasn't a whole lot of traveling and there was no speech making. We had our Justice people to do that. They had better titles. They had better public recognition, and we wanted them out front.

TG:

Would we find in talking with other people on these topics of crime and drug abuse that, for this period of time, they would be citing you as their primary contact, or the primary person within the White House complex on these things?

GS:

Yeah, the people you talked with you would. [Richard G.] Kleindienst would not; Kleindienst would consider it to be Krogh, and anything in writing would come from Krogh. So would [John N.] Mitchell; Mitchell would consider it to be Krogh or even Ehrlichman, but, when Ehrlichman was meeting with Mitchell on a crime thing, I would prepare the paper. At just below that level, they would say me, although they would also have a great tendency to say Krogh, because he was there from '68 on, when they initially did a lot of stuff. Pete [Richard W.] Velde, who heads LEAA now and has been there since the beginning, would cite me; Wally Johnson would cite me; Santarelli would cite me. On the hijacking program we put together a program to, you know, the walk throughs and everything. General [Benjamin 0.] Davis, who was at [the Department of] Transportation [DOT], would cite me; Mark Alger would cite me.

TG:

Would it be fair to assume then that anything outside of these two exceptions that you mentioned in the crime and justice area would have crossed your desk or at least you would be knowledgeable on it? Perhaps that's too broad a question.

GS:

Yeah, it would depend, it would depend. Some of the transportation stuff was done by Charlie Clapp. It was transportation policy stuff that was not of immediate need, in which case it would pass my desk and I wouldn't know anything about it. It would also pass Krogh's desk with the same reaction, you know, "Oh, yes." Other than that, I would pretty much know about it.

TG:

So for these areas that you have mentioned, your office files, plus Bud Krogh's, would be the gold mine, the place that we should look to.

GS:

Yes. We put an awful lot of blunt language down on crime and drug initiatives and why we were doing stuff and how it would work. The chron files, I think mine especially--the other reason that a lot of the stuff will be in mine instead of Bud's, is because my secretary did all the typing for Presidential papers. She was trained at IBM, and she typed immediately and letter perfect, and so we had a gold mine going for that reason.

TG:

Was that Donna Larsen?

GS:

No it was not; it was JoAnne LaMere. It's really, it's an interesting group. JoAnne LaMere was my secretary and roared with Kathy [Kathleen A.] Chenow, who unfortunately when Donfeld left, she was Donfeld's secretary, she went down to the Room 16 unit and entered into horror. Bud Krogh's original secretary was Jane Dart, who married John Campbell and moved to the West coast. She was replaced by Saundra Greene, who married me after Krogh left. When Kathy Chenow left, she (my secretary Joanne) became good friends and roommates with Walt Minnick's secretary who's Gay, her name then was Gay Guy; now it's Gay Pirozzi. So, you know, it was kind of a very clubby, well, it didn't appear to be that clubby, but it was a very fun, jovial group that enjoyed working and everything else. But JoAnne did the typing, JoAnne did all that, all that typing. And that, with Krogh's files, should be the schedule proposals, why the President ought to do something. We got very candid about the reasons that this needed publicity and why we had to do this or that. Krogh's files will be much more reflective of the war between Customs and BNDD because that one involved inevitably Cabinet members, and Krogh was very up-to-date on that. The policy work below that I spent more time on: whether Customs would start a new initiative or how they were deploying their men either at ports or overseas.

TG:

Were there other areas that perhaps were being handled by other members of the Domestic Council outside of Bud Krogh's office, that you got involved in at any point?

GS:

Aside from executive reorganization, no. You should know that Ed [Edwin L.] Harper's office did an awful lot of long-range analysis and did the substance clearance for all papers put out during the election process. They would be sending around papers until the cows came home on topical areas. You know, they'd clear it before the RNC [Republican National Committee] could send something out, they cleared it before CRP [Committee to Reelect the President]. For substance, just to be sure it was close to what they said the government was doing. Harper would flash these out with a day-long turnaround, and I would do all of that work that came directly to me and directly back to a guy named Peter...

TG:

Peter Michel.

GS:

...Michel. Pete's over at HUD, [Department of Housing and Urban Development] now, but all that work, and that won't be in my file, because that would be just handwritten on there, you know, correcting words and then sent back. Maybe it was xeroxed, maybe not, depending on how fast we did it, but it should be in the shelves.

TG:

Any substantive contact with any members of the White House staff outside of the Domestic Council?

GS:

No. Pretty much the Domestic Council did substance; everybody else, did forms, so there was form contact with speech writers, form contact with Rhatican, form contact with Neal Ball, but no substance.

TG:

How about [the] National Security Council [NSC] in these international areas?

GS:

No. Henry Kissinger had no interest whatsoever in narcotics and deeded it all to the Domestic Council. All initiatives were done from here. We dragged the Department of State kicking and screaming, same thing with Defense. Only after the President had breakfast with the Joint Chiefs did they decide they may have a drug problem. One of the appalling things now is that, without the President pushing on international narcotics, it's not being done. Now since, ever since Kissinger became Secretary of State, they've gotten an interest, because the NSC hadn't had a whole lot to do. They do have a narcotics guy now, but he wasn't around, and nobody was there to help in the very beginning, although there was a guy named Art [Arthur T.] Downey, who left very early on around 1970, who was very helpful to Krogh in narcotics. Krogh took more international trips than I did, because he had to go around and bang ambassadors. You know, "You got to do something," and Minnick took them all the time because he was putting all the programs together. Minnick came in pretty much with the start-up of narcotics internationally. His departure right after the reelection, 4 or 5 months I guess--well, maybe it was through the end of the year--signaled kind of the end of the real push on it too: "Yeah we do it, but we don't...." You know. You look at Minnick's files, and they should be in agreement with Krogh's or near Krogh's and that ought to be about the complete picture of international narcotics. There was a guy named Nordahl that did a little bit of treatment but not.... His files won't be very reflective of much. Donfeld started the treatment stuff and then went to the Special Action Office, and we relied on Donfeld to do it from over there. The enforcement will all be in my files, except for this massive battle, which some of it will be in Krogh's. The events, the reorganization, all that stuff will be in mine. Hijacking will all be in mine. The famous heroin hot line will be in mine. Now since then, executive reorganization will all be in mine. If I may, I'm going to move up to after the election.

TG:

Certainly, go ahead.

GS:

After the election Krogh went to DOT, and I took over those areas and worked as an Associate Director reporting to Cole again in the crime and drug area, just to follow them all through, the same areas will again all be in my file. The drug reorganization that created DEA [Drug Enforcement Administration] occurred, the selection of [John R.] Bartels, the selection of [Robert L.] DuPont, the dealing of initiatives and trying to catch up with the new Department of Justice. You know, they went through some Attorney Generals rather rapidly. There will be almost nothing in the way of correspondence with [Elliot L.] Richardson. Richardson did nothing in the way of contact with the White House; he ran an independent entity and there was very little give and take. You'll find almost, you'll find memos that asked them to do things, and there will be no response in the file. Then, you'll find, when [William B.] Saxbe got on, a lot of mail going that way, saying "Here's what we're doing," "here's why," "I need your help on this," "I need your help on that," and it will start being directed also to Silberman, up until August 9. A lot of mail going to Silberman, [but] almost none with Treasury because of the reorganization. There are a couple of other new topics that we did: privacy will all be in there, in mine, and there's a Domestic Council Committee on privacy that [Philip W.] Buchen was doing work on. Now I don't know what, whether you get the Vice President's papers.

TG:

No, no.

GS:

O.K.

TG:

[Gerald R.] Ford's papers are his own,...

GS:

O.K., O.K.

TG:

...as is the case with every Vice President.

GS:

Then you'll see probably half the correspondence on privacy and almost all of it on campaign reform. Now, once we move past the election, I did work on individual topics with other people on the White House staff, substantively. I worked with Bryce Harlow on campaign reform, he and I put that together. I worked very closely with Dean Burch on "Topic A"--now, that's very sensitive, so I'm going to be as vague as I can, O.K.?

TG:

Well stop there if it is.

GS:

No, no, it's not that sensitive. I did an awful lot of work for [J. Fred] Buzhardt for about the past eight months in publishing the "Blue Book", the transcript of the tapes; listening to the tapes, preparing the index and analysis, transcribing the tapes, organizing what we did, all that stuff. My name will appear nowhere. I did all the research through Ehrlichman's files whenever there was a file search that was done. They didn't want the other lawyers in there. I worked very briefly on the short tenure of Judge [John] Sullivan, when Sullivan was here. I worked very closely with Buzhardt and [James D.] St. Clair. I interviewed and hired St. Clair's staff; I did all the administrative work on putting that together. I got the lawyers from the Department of Justice that originally came over to aid in the defense. I didn't do the substantive work but I know all the people, and I know what they were working on. The only place--I said my name wouldn't appear--the only place my name appears is [a] memorandum from [Alexander M.] Haig, when Buzhardt had his heart attack, saying Shepard will decide who sees what files. There had to be a double clearance (Secret Service cleared and the White House cleared) for anyone to get into the files. Buzhardt had that authority; when Buzhardt had his heart attack and they were in Cairo, Egypt, Haig wired back the wire that said "Shepard has the authority." I guess that's the sum total of what was done too. You know the Special Files in [Rooms] 84 and 522, you will find my name in the logs all the time, going in and out, supervising, searching pursuant to court orders, reproducing originals, removing originals for transmission to court, all that stuff.

TG:

I don't want to pursue this very far, because I don't want to ask you questions that I shouldn't be asking, but, based on what you've told me, Geoff, then, if and when the times comes for us to do additional research on this topic, by all means you should be one of the people we should talk with.

GS:

Yeah, second to Buzhardt. I did what Buzhardt asked. I can tell you where papers are if you want to find something. I can tell you how samething was done. I am not in any position to tell you the considerations taken into account in making a decision on what, whether to take an appeal or not take an appeal. I may have just a little knowledge to throw you off. The only guy that knows that is Buzhardt and, you know, I don't know how much time you are going to be spending with him, but he carries it all in his head. He leaves no files: you'll find no phone logs, you'll find no appointment calendar, you'll find no manor by Buzhardt.

TG:

Well, then, you and Buzhardt are the two people we should talk with, how's that?

GS:

In the reverse order.

TG:

O.K.

GS:

Right?

TG:

O.K.

GS:

O.K.

TG:

O.K., fair enough. Well, were there other topics that you covered, had responsibility for after the election that are significant?

GS:

Privacy is one that I put together, and I put it together pretty much by myself until the Vice President was put in charge, and then I did it with Phil Buchen. You'll find memos to Buchen, you'll find the initial thinking on privacy and you will find it goes all the way back to Rehnquist in the privacy file, when it's all put together. I can't think of any other topical areas that don't fall generally under Justice; pretty much everything came under justice was mine. Dana Mead did civil rights for a very long time under Ed [Edward L.] Morgan and I picked it up right when he left. Now he left what? Two or three weeks before, so you may find that I technically possess his or Morgan's files. I will be the guy that sends them down there but they are Dana's or they're Ed Morgan's. I have Lew [Lewis A.] Engman's files from anti-trust, or some of them, and I've sent them down already. He left to become head of FTC [Federal Trade Commission] and I got the anti-trust stuff from him, but there is very little done in the anti-trust area, no communication at all.

TG:

Well, let me toss out another question that might wrap it up then. Of all of these responsibilities that you've had, which one would you consider the most satisfying, which one did you feel you had the greatest sense of accomplishment in or with? That's a difficult question.

GS:

Yeah, that's a tough question. I think as far as orchestrating the government, I think we made the most move in drug abuse. As far as, what has happened is that we got good initiatives going, we weren't able to pursue it, keep on top of it, we lost Presidential interest as it were. I mean, you know, you just couldn't keep it going. Now, because of that inattention or because of our inability to keep hammering away at it, keep it in the forefront of public consciousness, drug abuse is on the rise. So, we are having to look at it more carefully again now. As far as a single problem that was put together and solved, it's the hijacking program. At the time there was a big effort to create a federal force of three thousand people to supervise all the entry. We worked instead to develop a program where the person flying paid the extra cost, rather than the general taxpayer. That was self-regulating so that technological improvements could occur. You know now those metal detector tests are much more sophisticated, the x-rays are much more sophisticated. That occurred because the airlines were held responsible and the airports were held responsible. We had a very satisfactory result: there were twenty-two hijackings the year before we put it into effect, we had to--well, [John H.] Shaffer got fired, the head of FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] got fired because he fought it so much, didn't want to acknowledge that hijackings were a problem. The major reason for his lack of reappointment was he would not take Presidential direction in that area. The other guy who worked on that was Bill [William A.] Boleyn at OMB. He was head of an organization called Program Coordination, you know, which took the difficult ones. Kolberg, Bill [William H.] Kolberg had it first, and then Bill Boleyn took it over. We put together the hijacking program. And it was done in a very good way, we asked DOT for their best thoughts, what would they do if they had all the authority and then we gave them as much of that as we could to solve the problem? It's, that particular one has stayed solved. The other stuff, we've passed laws, we've done events and we have held our own or gained a little bit, but they are continuing issues.

TG:

That covers those questions that I wanted to ask, Geoff. Now, if it Beans to you, based on what I've asked and what you've answered, that that covers the field fairly well, we can call it quits.

GS:

That's fine.

TG:

At least it's a good start.

GS:

You can look through the files, you'll see some other extraneous things, but pretty much that covers it.

TG:

Well, that gives me an opportunity to come back and see you in a couple years from now.